Friday, May 6, 2022Â Â Â
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Jesus and Saul and the lectionary
Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.
The day after Cinco de Mayo is a big day in the Roman lectionary year C. Saul is confronted by Jesus, and Jesus confronts his followers with a description of how they will eat his flesh and drink his blood. General Zaragoza, having defeated the French and attending the celebratory (and daily) Mass at Puebla, would have heard all of these scriptures read on May 6, 1862. Whether he was able to pay attention? We just don’t know. It might have been difficult.
Stonewall Jackson, who perhaps read the lectionary but certainly read the Bible every day, was also victorious in May, 1862. The Confederate Army was flourishing. But by 1863 the French defeat in Mexico, which prevented the French from trading weapons for cotton with the US states in the south, helped turn the tables. Stonewall died, Vicksburg was captured, the Battle of Gettysburg was won, and Napoleon in France had several second thoughts about allying with Jefferson Davis. And Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, written in 1862, was published on January 1, 1863.
Saul, breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord, received permission to imprison members of the Way in Damascus. As he neared Damascus (180 miles north of Jerusalem), a light from the sky flashed around him. He fell to the ground. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Who are you, sir? “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”
Jesus spoke strongly to the Pharisee’s strong man.
Now get up! Go into Damascus and you will be told what to do.
Saul was suddenly blind. Saul ate and drank nothing for three days. Still he was blind. But he was told what to do, by a terrified member of the Way. Ananias, heart in mouth, at first resisted his own vision of Jesus.
But the Lord said to him, “Go, for this man is a chosen instrument of mine, and I will show him what he will have to suffer for my name.”
Ananias might have thought, “Well, if Saul is going to be punished …” Whatever he thought, he went.
Ananias laid hands on Saul, and Saul regained his sight. He got up and was baptized, and ate. In just a few days he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, that Jesus is the Son of God.
Saul, soon to be called Paul, told this story to his listeners. And he told the story of Jesus’ body and blood as well, how they were to share their faith with each other in this meal, this communion, this Eucharist (1 Cor 11:23-26). He spoke of what Jesus spoke of first, saying over and over:
This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world … Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life. For my Flesh is true food, and my Blood is True drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. The one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
Only then does Jesus spiritualize what he has said six times:
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Paul skips the allusions to cannibalism. But Jesus insists that his listeners, if they are to become followers, hear his words in their most carnal application. Jesus is a physical man, as are his listeners. But he is far more than that, and so are they.
One of Jesuit Father Teilhard de Chardin’s most famous sayings (whether he said it or not), was that “we are not physical beings having a spiritual experience … we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.” Isn’t that just what Jesus is saying too? And Paul as well, over and over in his sermons, speeches and conversations?
For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring.”
As the weather turns horrifyingly hot in India and Pakistan, and even in Texas these next two weeks – the victory in Mexico with all its attendant consequences, the words of Jesus, the fall of Saul and rise of Paul, all come together in us with even greater warmth, as the fires of the Holy Spirit fall upon us all.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
